MIAMI, Florida — The United States has granted political asylum to Luis Galeano, the exiled Nicaraguan journalist whom immigration agents detained in Orlando in September while he was working as a ride-hailing driver, ending — for now — a case that press-freedom groups on three continents had taken up as a test of whether America remains a refuge for journalists fleeing persecution.

Source: U.S. Press Freedom Tracker

The asylum was granted on October 23, 2026, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, and Galeano announced it himself on October 26 on Café con Voz, the online news broadcast he rebuilt in exile in Miami. Deutsche Welle reported the grant on October 28, noting that it came about a month after he had spent more than a week in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Source: Deutsche Welle via LatAm Journalism Review

“A miracle” — the announcement

Speaking on Café con Voz, Galeano called the decision a “miracle” and “historic” — not just for his family, he said, but for Nicaraguans fighting for freedom and those still awaiting asylum. “I feel eternally blessed, because today we are before you with our asylum approved,” he said in Spanish. “It's a precedent. The United States government has given us space, has given us place.” The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed the grant in a statement on X and thanked the press-freedom and human-rights organizations and U.S. lawmakers who had called for his release and protection: “The United States must remain a refuge for journalists persecuted for their work,” CPJ said.

The September arrest in Orlando

ICE arrested Galeano on September 14, 2026, in Orlando, in central Florida, while he was working as a driver for a ride-hailing service — Uber, in Deutsche Welle's account. He was able to briefly call his wife, Deykell Santamaría, from a police station and ask her to contact his attorney and notify other journalists, the Nicaraguan investigative outlet Divergentes reported. He was held at the Krome detention center, an ICE facility in Miami. ICE has not publicly explained the reason for his detention. Galeano had a pending asylum application, filed in 2019, and held a work permit and a Social Security number, The Guardian reported. The Department of Homeland Security said after his arrest that Galeano had entered the country legally in December 2018 but remained beyond his authorized stay.

Bond, a credible-fear acknowledgment, and then the grant

An immigration judge granted Galeano bond on September 23, and he was released on September 26 after nearly two weeks in detention; Reporters Without Borders confirmed the release. Galeano said that during his bail hearing, the government acknowledged he had demonstrated a credible fear of returning to Nicaragua. His lawyers cited that acknowledgment in a motion asking the immigration judge to review his case, and the judge subsequently approved his asylum application, he said. He told his audience he was notified on October 26 that the application filed seven years earlier had been approved.

Why he fled Nicaragua

Galeano worked for the Nicaraguan newspaper El Nuevo Diario and was a reporter for the EFE news agency's Nicaragua bureau between 2004 and 2006, before directing Café con Voz on the 100% Noticias news service. The threats around his work began early: in February 2011, Amnesty International issued an urgent action after an unidentified caller threatened him over reporting for El Nuevo Diario on alleged government misuse of about $20 million, warning that his family would not see him again if he published. He finally fled in December 2018, days after police raided 100% Noticias and authorities issued an arrest order for him; the raid led to the arrests of the outlet's director and news director.

Stripped of his citizenship

In February 2023, Nicaragua's government — led by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, the husband-and-wife pair who are now co-presidents — declared Galeano a “traitor to the homeland” and stripped him of his citizenship and his assets, along with 93 other government critics. The group included journalists, writers, human rights advocates, religious leaders and opposition figures. From exile in Miami, Galeano rebuilt Café con Voz as an online program and kept reporting on the Nicaraguan government, taking up driving work to supplement his income.

A wider pattern: Nicaraguan exiles in U.S. detention

Galeano's case was not isolated. In an October 2 statement, Human Rights Watch said at least eight Nicaraguan exiles stripped of their nationality had been detained by U.S. immigration authorities, seven of them among the 222 political prisoners Nicaragua expelled to the United States in February 2023, whom Washington had admitted on two-year humanitarian parole. At least four of the detainees had pending asylum claims, and at least five were believed to still be in detention when the report was published. “After offering refuge to these critics of the Nicaraguan government just three years ago, the United States is now detaining them and threatening to deport them,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, which noted that international law prohibits returning anyone to a country where they face persecution or torture. An estimated 268 Nicaraguan journalists have fled into exile, according to a January 2026 Committee to Protect Journalists report.

What happens next

For Galeano, the grant resolves the asylum application he filed in 2019 and removes — on the facts of this case — the threat that the September detention would end in his removal to the country that stripped his citizenship. His message on October 26 was that the work continues from exile: “We were firm and dignified and willing to give battle from exile,” he said. “And now, we don't give up, we keep doing the work. We keep denouncing the dictatorship that thought it had defeated us.” What his precedent means for the other detained Nicaraguan exiles Human Rights Watch counted — and for asylum seekers still waiting — will be decided case by case in the same immigration courts.